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I have discovered that the majority of the Activity Based Explorations are worthwhile. There were a few Guided Explorations that were more meaningful to students. Sometimes the Guided Exploration could be used to reinforce the Activity Based Exploration in small groups, or on occasion, the whole class. Students learned how to work collaboratively with their peers. Additionally, students learned to listen to understand their peers rather than listen to respond, which has transferred into other subject areas. Now that complimentary handouts are created for units, I am eager to try Activity Based Explorations earlier next year.

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Step 1: Engage in more math discourse and shared writing to start the year.
Step 2: More student mentors
Step 3: A prompt to give in the beginning and end of the unit as a pre/post assessment

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We are planning to begin implementing math journal writing next year starting in September. This would lend itself nicely with all units in Reveal especially the first unit which encourages students to reflect on their math mindset. Writing is an area of continued growth and support for students so this work will lend itself into our classes.

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Yes, our math journal project did address the problem. Some successes were:
1. All students showed growth in their mathematical writing.
2. Students also strengthened their mathematical discourse.
3. This provided us with a measure of student growth across the year. In addition, it shows students how they improved in their mathematical thinking/writing.
4. This experience reinforced the importance of mathematical explanations.
5. It helped foster a math community in our classes that included Vivian and Nancy.

Challenges
1. Some students at the end of this process still struggle to engage in mathematical discourse and writing about their thinking.

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My initial goal was to begin with two Activity Based Explorations that stood out in each unit. Unit by unit, I started to lean towards teaching the Activity Based Explorations rather than Guided. I took notes following each Activity Based Exploration regarding what I enjoyed from each exploration or would do differently. Student mastery was determined by observation notes from student conversations and student work samples.

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We learned that talk, revision, and use of checklists are vital practices for improving math writing. We also learned student mentors were much more helpful than teacher-created mentors. Finally shared writing experiences were extremely beneficial to our students.

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I think accountable talk will remain an important aspect of my teaching in all curricular areas. Math, especially, is an area where accountable talk almost feels integral to the learning and teaching of math concepts. A vision I have is a growing math word wall with visuals that students can refer to and add to throughout the year.

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I think it did. I think it challenged students to say and write more than simply stating the answer. Listening to their peers discuss math during a fishbowl brought to their attention talk moves that they wanted to try out and the importance of listening to one another. I think it challenged them to be clear because they wanted to be understood. The focus on accountable talk shifted the culture in the classroom to one where talk was a practice and something to refine. As a whole class, I could tell that turn and talk conversations during math were more productive and focused and students were excited to share their thinking, however, I think a challenge was tracking each students' individual progress with accountable talk.

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For each unit, we chose about 3 "Math is..." questions from the beginning, middle, and end of the unit.  We had students respond to these prompts. We examined the stronger responses and had the class discuss why the response was strong.  In addition after reading articles, we added "Math Talk" prior to writing in order to generate, synthesize, and conceptualize concepts.

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We might take the popular games that were very engaging and modify them. For example, on certain game boards, we can white out the math problems and have students come up with their own problems to work on. Or we, as teachers, can create a bank of problems that can be inputted onto those blank game boards to adjust the difficulty to meet the needs of that particular group or partnership.

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Math journaling has helped students to expand their thinking in writing. We have seen a clear success with our implemented lessons.

The challenge is making the time.  We found that committing to Fridays help manage this time. Also, the workbook pages do not lend themselves to writing explanations to the depth that we have taught this year.  You need time to modify the workbook pages and have templates ready. In 3rd grade there is a lot of teaching into organization, so templates seemed key for success.

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The focus on accountable talk has deepened the math thinking in our conversations and activities. It has changed the way I listen and ask questions. For example, rather than accepting a one word answer or an answer that solely focuses on computing, I have challenged students to tell me more. Highlighting vocabulary and insisting that students be specific provides them with the tools needed to be understood by others. A focus on accountable talk ultimately sends the message to students that their thinking is important and worth sharing.

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Students struggle to explain their mathematical thinking using written form on assessments, especially the New York State Math Exam.   This is important to use because explanations show a deeper level of mathematical understanding versus rote calculations.

Minimal responses from students. Many students just reword the question and don't really answer it.  Or, if they answer it, it is bare bones without reasoning.
We have started our "Math Is..." Journals in which students answer key prompts from the "math is..." 8 mathematical practices.
We have been able to identify students who seem mathematically strong, but struggle to articulate their thinking in written form.  Conversely, we have also identified some students who are weaker with calculations, but are able to explain their thinking a bit more.

We are looking to strength our teaching of providing exemplars of strong mathematical reasoning.  We want to practice teaching into the discourse more often, and engaging in mathematical conversation in the hopes that it will translate into the students' writing about math.

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Successes:
There was a tremendous amount of accountable talk and discourse. Students were engaged and most of the games reinforced student learning. It provided a hands-on experience so students had opportunities to engage in a variety of ways.

Challenges:
Some of the games were simple tasks that can only be completed once as students were able to answer the problems quickly. At times, certain games did not require students to think deeply.

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Action Plan:

First - We discussed with the math collegial team the journal math prompts that are throughout Reveal. We saw which ones are being used in other buildings and we decided to model with one to students and then chose different math prompts for our students. We were the ICT classroom in this research group which allowed us to work in small groups to teach into this work.

Step 2: We began a math journal with prompts from Reveal Math (Math is...) or other questions from the program that asks students to explain or justify their answer. We provided students with sentence starters and a model to show them how to include vocabulary, models, explanations, counterclaims and equations.

Third- We gave students time once a week to focus on this skill and provide students with journaling time or written math homework. This allowed students to practice explaining/ justifying their thinking. We generated "must haves" that we encourage students to incorporate into their responses.

Fourth-We collaborated with other 3rd grade colleagues to discuss our findings and provide different strategies. We collaborated with Vivian Roberts within our classroom and during assured PD to strengthening our teaching of writing explanations.

Fifth- we created a rubric for our students to self reflect on their work.

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When we were about to finish Unit 3, students had mastered basic routines and expectations. Thus far, I had only used Guided practice. I grew more curious about Activity Based Explorations. My problem of practice was navigating when it was more appropriate to teach Guided Exploration and when is it more appropriate to teach Activity-Based Exploration.

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We learned that students need explicit instruction and modeling to help lift the level of math journaling.  We realized that we needed to spend extra time with small groups to teach students strong explanations. Once students were exposed to accountable talk, checklists, and models we saw writing in math increased.

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The structure of my investigation included having conversations with students that shed light on the importance of math talk and giving students lots of opportunities to engage in math conversations, to reflect on on those conversations and to observe the math talk of their peers. By charting students' ideas during math conversations, they were encouraged to use math vocabulary, be specific, and build upon each others' ideas. I charted student talk specifically during "Be Curious" and Number Routine activities. Fishbowling partner talk allowed students to take the role of observer and gave them a chance to critique peer conversations. I video recorded student conversations during turn and talks, fish bowls and partner math games. Finally, using all we had learned about accountable talk, I worked with students to elevate their math writing by observing what makes math writing great and reflecting on their own writing.

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With our new focus and emphasis, we have found that we are more regularly evaluating our students’ approach to solving and practicing math problems through the Reveal games. Over time, this focus has sparked our students to intrinsically tap into their growing toolbox of applying their strategies. In addition, we are now able to get a better understanding of their ability to access, use, and communicate what they know about math concepts presented in our district-wide program, Reveal Math. Participating in the Math Collegial Research Team has provided us a place where we have been able to discuss, improve, evaluate, and deepen our teacher content knowledge. Our pedagogical repertoire has expanded.

Overall, we learned that introducing the games to our First and Second Grade students was a very powerful, valuable, and positive experience. We also learned just how important it is to make sure this sort of vehicle is presented throughout the units in order to reach all of our students. We agree that our project has helped our students better apply strategies in a more hands-on, less-threatening, and different mode. The smiles, engagement, and collaboration were, at times, infectious. Implementing these games/activities and collaborating with colleagues in a learning environment has allowed us to build a strong foundation for the subsequent grade levels. In turn, this will enhance students’ continual use of creative strategies around mathematics.

The children grew increasingly willing to practice and show off their mathematical toolbox. With this comfort level, we found our students ultimately needed less time to embrace a new math concept. We also found that the better the fluency and application of prior knowledge, the deeper and more engaging class conversations and mathematical discourse grew.

Throughout this process our students became invested problem solvers through games. Students took pride in using multiple strategies from previous lessons. We observed that the students’ problem solving stamina improved their engagement and love of math. We saw a true change in the attitude and effort in our students through this implementation. It was exciting to see them motivated and eventually become independent and creative problem solvers.

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ACTION PLAN:

STEP 1:

We chose at least 1 game per unit to implement into class math routines.

STEP 2:

We established expectations for accountable partner talk.

STEP 3:

Throughout each unit and/or at the end as a culmination, we introduced the units' best task cards or games.

STEP 4:

We took photos to document student engagement.

STEP 5:

We took note of student engagement, partner collaboration and talk, use of pertinent unit vocabulary and evidence of content understanding..

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Our students struggle to explain their mathematical thinking using written form on assessments. This is important to use because explanations show a deeper level of mathematical understanding versus rote calculations.  We were noticing that students were giving us minimal responses from students. Many students just reword the question and don't really answer it. Students need to work on justifying their answers instead of just stating yes, no or just an expression. They don't always know how to show a model to support their answers or explain using math vocabulary to justify their answer.  Students just state an expression  or an example  instead of showcasing their depth of understanding a problem by explaining, stating a counterclaim and proving how they are right or wrong.

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We, the Option A Team, created and implemented the Reveal math games to help us:

● Foster our professional knowledge and growth with our new math curriculum

● Strengthen students' mathematical discourse through games

● Provide students with exposure with and the opportunity to discuss and share their ideas, gain new ways of thinking, work as part of a partnership or team, and access Reveal Math games through my website

● Promote flexible, creative, sense-making mathematicians

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My problem of practice is that students struggle to explain their thinking clearly in math. They are more driven to supply an answer rather than describe the way in which they reached that answer. They either do not know how to explain or they explain in an incoherent way.